Priced to Kill

by Margaret Evans

  “No, that’s somebody else. They both have blonde hair. This lady works next door for Erica. She’s just helping out while Erica’s parents are off on their world cruise.”

  “Didn’t they always talk about doing that when we were kids?” Jenna asked, taking two more nibbles.

  “Uh-huh. I’m glad they finally got the chance.” She left off telling Jenna that she would have known about all this if she had gone to dinner with them the other day.

  “Me, too. Not enough couples get to do things like that anymore. Hey, I’m almost finished with two more embroidered towel sets for you. I’ll bring them over tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, Jenna, thanks,” Laura said. “Are you sure you won’t take a commission?”

  “I’m sure. No commission. Gift for being my friend through thick and thin. Oh, and that girl who was just here? The one who’s working for Erica?”

  Laura looked the question.

  “She was awfully interested in those quilts of yours. Every time you got busy, she just stared at them. And by the way, you need a bigger item beneath the fireplace out there, like maybe a loveseat.”

  “Yeah, I know, working on it,” Laura said, polishing off her fudge.

  But Laura had had enough of interest in her quilts for the day. It was time for dinner and a quiet game of scrabble with her best friend. Jenna always won, but it was still fun.

  “Let’s go. I’ve got a slow-cooked meal waiting for us that will make you ignore the fact that you’ve just eaten your dessert first.”

  Jenna laughed and followed her friend up the stairs.

  thirty-one

  Kelly and Laura were grabbing a quick lunch at Brandy’s Diner the next day. Kelly was bursting; she had a photo Erica had texted her of the shy boyfriend, Torrey Culver.

  “Thank you for getting me out of there for a breather,” Laura said. “I’m glad you’re in town so long.”

  “It’s the job,” Kelly explained. “I’ll probably be here for another two or three weeks, which will be nice. Maybe we can all manage to go out together for drinks or dinner again, and maybe we can persuade Jenna to come.”

  “I hope. So show me the boy who’s too shy to meet us, so we’ll know him when he trips over us, eventually.”

  “Here he is. I know it’s a bad snap, dark and blurred, but I think you can still make him out next to Erica’s red hair.”

  She passed her phone over to Laura as the teen-aged table server brought over their food and glanced at the phone.

  “Hey, I’ve seen that guy. He’s been in here.”

  Kelly and Laura looked up at her. Torrey Culver was supposed to be matriculating at the University of Minnesota. Perhaps he came out to see Erica on a weekend?

  “Was he with Erica Rollins?” Kelly asked. “You know Erica—she and her dad run the florist shop a few blocks from here on Taylor Street.”

  “I know Erica,” the teen nodded. “But he wasn’t with her; he was with some blonde. You better talk to Brandy. I’ll get her.”

  Kelly and Laura stared at each other and said nothing until Brandy arrived at their booth. Laura was thinking, too, that he looked an awful lot like the man who had been in her shop inquiring after the Dorr quilt. But with the photo being such poor quality, she couldn’t be sure.

  After checking out the picture, Brandy nodded.

  “It could be the guy. It was hard to see him clearly. Here’s the photo I took of him,” she said and scrolled through her phone to find the picture she’d snapped.

  “I see what you mean,” Laura said. “It could be, but it’s really hard to tell the way they’re both huddled together. Why the curiosity and why did you take this picture?”

  “Well, Jean noticed they were acting kind of ‘furtive,’ and I kept an eye out the next time they showed up here. Sure enough, they were definitely acting secretive, leaning forward, covering their faces and mouths, keeping away from everyone here. I decided I would snap his license plate the next time he showed up.”

  “Do you know the girl he was with?” Kelly asked.

  “No. Jean and I both think we’ve seen her somewhere in town, maybe working in one of the shops, I don’t know.”

  “Did you get the license plate yet?” Laura inquired, thinking the girl with him had done a great job disguising herself with a scarf, her hand across her cheek, turning toward the window and looking down. All that was visible was some of her blonde hair. Laura knew a lot of blondes.

  “No, he hasn’t been back since, but it’s only been a couple of days. I’ll give you a call if I see him again, if you like.”

  “Please do.”

  Laura continued the conversation after Brandy and the teen left.

  “I don’t want to say this too loudly because I don’t really know how to tell you this, but Torrey Culver looks a lot like the guy who came to my shop recently. I mean, it could just be two bad pictures but the two men are definitely similar in features and hair. Nose, too. Chins, mouths, maybe not exactly. Hard to tell from these photos. And we have no idea of the heights or builds from their two pictures.”

  “Do you have a picture of the guy who came to your store?”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” Laura said, remembering Eric Williams had sent it to her phone. She flipped open the older phone and waited for each photo file to open. The girls compared the pictures.

  “Where did you get these? Are you snapping pictures of everyone who comes into your store?” Kelly asked.

  “Actually, I didn’t take these pictures, Eric Williams did. He came in to sell me insurance, and he noticed I looked uncomfortable talking to the guy. So he took pictures of him. You should have seen this man. He was really interested in one of my quilts, and since it wasn’t out on display, he wanted to go back in my stockroom and search around for it. Wouldn’t give up.”

  “Creepy.”

  “Yes, it is. But it’s hard to tell if that’s Torrey. I’m thinking no.”

  “Eric Williams did something to help you?” Kelly pondered.

  “Yeah, weird, huh?”

  The ladies were silent a moment.

  “Do we know how old Torrey is? I mean, he could be going to grad school at U Minn but be a few years older.”

  “I think he is older, in his thirties, maybe. Why?”

  “Because the guy who came into my shop was in his mid to late thirties, I think. And he wasn’t very shy, more pushy and forward.”

  They were silent again for a moment until Kelly spoke.

  “And neither of us is saying anything to Erica about this or about his maybe meeting with some blonde.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Laura added. “Not until we have some proof.”

  Laura’s afternoon in the shop went by as usual, and her nearly depleted stock of Valentine-themed merchandise continued to sell. But she wasn’t concerned about her stock levels as she probably should have been; she was worried that there might be a connection between her Melanie Dorr quilt and Erica’s boyfriend, Torrey Culver, whom none of them had met in person. She couldn’t wait to close the shop at the end of the day, grabbed a quick dinner and headed off to the library where she could look up currently registered students at the University of Minnesota. And if the picture of Torrey Culver showed that he was the man who had come to her shop looking for the teal-colored quilt, then there was definitely a connection there. But what it was, she had no clue.

  Laura logged into the library’s access to college students, but she was immediately disappointed when she found mostly lists and not many pictures. So she changed tracks and spoke with Madelynne since Melba had already left for the evening and enlisted her aid in looking up as much as they could find about Melanie Dorr, her quilts, disease and death, and see if anything could be called amiss. Hopefully, Madelynne could think up other searches that helped find out even more information than Laura had.
Together, they pored through the newspapers articles, clippings, obituaries, international articles and Web pages. There was a lot of material with Melanie Dorr’s notoriety and the work she did, plus her award-winning quilts.

  Since the library was fairly quiet that evening, Madelynne enlisted the aid of two more clerks in the data search. After two hours, the four of them had uncovered and gathered a lot of information. When asked about the quest, Madelynne replied that Laura Keene thought there was something fishy about this woman’s death.

  Laura, several computers away, didn’t hear the comment. She thanked everyone for their help, gathered the printed articles and information into her notebook, and headed home to study the research.

  After she left, the three women talked among themselves about Laura’s “investigation.”

  In the dark corner of the library, a man sat reading a newspaper. He had watched the computer searches that began when the woman with honey-colored hair entered the library and how it had progressed, gathering more individuals into its folds. How they had printed everything and she’d taken it all with her when she left. He finished reading his newspaper, folded it and set it down on one of the tables. He went to the computer Laura had used and hit history, saw what she had seen.

  An aide came over to offer her assistance.

  “What’s all the hoopla about?” he asked, showing the lady the last website Laura had accessed.

  “Oh, that’s just the last search made by someone helping the police in their investigations,” she mentioned off-handedly.

  “Who is she? Some private investigator or consultant?”

  “No, she’s just a lady who runs a thrift shop here, but she often helps the police clear up mysteries. Her dad was a cop. She solved a real murder a few weeks ago.”

  The man looked thoughtfully at the Web page and turned to look at the door through which Laura had left. He switched to another search, checked his email, got up and left the library.

  thirty-two

  Falling asleep in the middle of trying to organize the paperwork from the library was not Laura’s intention. But that was exactly what she did after she got home. Papers were spread everywhere on the carpet of her living room, underneath her where she had leaned over to rest on her arm and her eyes had fallen shut. No blanket. She woke up in the middle of the night, freezing, and stumbled off to her bed to pick up where she left off in the morning.

  In the morning, however, she overslept, got up and barely had time to shower, dress and eat before opening the shop. And there were gobs of people coming to pick over the goods, including the last of the Valentine’s Day-themed merchandise. She sold another heart-decorated teacup set, a matching teapot, placemats, napkins, the embroidered hand towels Jenna had brought over. When she closed for lunch, she ran upstairs and brought down some of the paperwork from the library.

  For some reason, she felt this couldn’t wait, and she sorted through the papers on the counter, between customers, shoving the piles under the counter whenever her help was needed. She discovered lots of articles, letters, blog posts, and pictures of Melanie Dorr that took her attention away from her customers, almost against her will. She ended up shuffling the paperwork more than she looked it over in the throng of shoppers. And so it went until around three o’clock.

  When Laura got the text from Erica to come over and meet the boyfriend, she froze. Either it was him or it wasn’t. She finished up with a customer and texted back that she was coming. As she closed shop for the few minutes, she tried to think of what she would say if Torrey Culver was the same man who had come to her shop a couple of days before. She decided that if it was the same man, she would say nothing about the roses or the teal quilt. Yikes. It was getting complicated. Where was Eric when you needed him?

  She drew up her courage and went next door.

  Sergeant Connor Fitzpatrick was studying the new work schedules that Corporal Brianna Broadmoor had just handed him. He hid his smile. The scheduling hadn’t looked this good in at least a year. He hoped it would last and this didn’t turn out to be an empty promise.

  “Have you posted this yet?”

  “No. Waiting for your approval.”

  He initialed it.

  “Go ahead and put it into the computer.”

  As she headed to the door, he called after her.

  “Good job, Broadmoor.”

  A reminder popped up on his personal phone calendar of the coming Valentine’s Day dinner with Laura so he would remember to ask her where she wanted to go for dinner, in advance. He stopped in the middle of the text. He might actually have to tell her about him and Eric Williams. What she had roped him into was something she should know, whether or not he wanted to tell her. She had shared her darkest secret with him. It was time he showed her the same courtesy.

  “Broadmoor!” he called her back and she stuck her head inside his door.

  “See if you can fix the schedule and get me off at five o’clock sharp on the fourteenth.”

  “Already done, sir. It’s in the air that you’re having dinner with Laura. In fact, you’re off for the whole day on the fourteenth.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, in case you wanted to buy a new necktie or shirt or flowers for Laura?”

  He shook his head slightly.

  What a town. That’s why he lived in Duluth.

  Maybe Laura could move to Duluth?

  Torrey Culver turned to meet Erica’s friend, Laura Keene, giving her a shy smile, and offered his hand. Laura gave his hand a good shake, probably overdone, she was that relieved that Torrey was not the man who had come to her shop looking for the teal-shaded log cabin-patterned quilt.

  Erica was beaming from behind the register after finishing with a customer.

  “Torrey says he saw you at the library last evening.”

  Laura looked surprised.

  “I didn’t see you there,” she said.

  “Oh, I was using one of the other computers across the way for a special project and I wanted to stop by and see Erica. But I noticed you had a lot of help from the librarians. Big research project?”

  “No, just looking up the history of one of the items in my shop next door. It has a history, and I was curious.”

  “You had a lot of people noticing and watching you last evening. I thought you should know. That’s why I stopped by and asked Erica if we could meet, so I could tell you that.”

  “A lot of people?”

  “Yes, a lot of people. I didn’t know if that meant anything or not. Some guy went to the computer you left even though there were others available and called over one of the librarians. She was there for a while, talking to him. I couldn’t hear what was said, just thought you should know.”

  “Wow, thanks,” Laura responded. “I appreciate you telling me. And I have to get back to the shop, but I’m really, really, really glad I got to meet you, Torrey, and thanks for telling me what you saw last night at the library.”

  As Laura skipped back to her shop and unlocked it, a familiar face appeared among the small queue of customers waiting for her to reopen. Dr. Colin Anderson smiled and waved over the heads of several shorter folks.

  While Anderson was a good doctor and a nice man, she had learned the hard way that any time he showed up and displayed any attention to her, Connor was likely to arrive at about the same time, see it and misinterpret it. So her feelings were mixed when she saw the doctor.

  He waited by the side of the store next to the period clothes and costumes until the shop was cleared of customers and approached her, pulling flowers from behind his back and setting them on the counter.

  “Early Valentine’s Day,” he said. “And I stopped by to see how you were doing, if you got over that bug.”

  She stared at the flowers too long, and finally picked them up.

  Just as Connor Fitzpat
rick opened the front door.

  To Connor’s credit, he didn’t miss how her face lit up at his entrance and greeted Anderson cordially enough. Watched as she turned to the doctor.

  “Thanks, Dr. Anderson. And I believe I am over that bug.” She set the flowers back down on the counter.

  “Sergeant,” Anderson said, “I hear there are some scheduling changes going on in your department. I trust they are for the better.”

  Connor had no idea how Anderson had found out anything about their staffing difficulties or the resolution thereof, except that this was a small town.

  “We’re managing.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that everything’s going great, and I’ll wish you both a good afternoon,” Anderson said as he shook Connor’s offered hand, waved to Laura, and left.

  Connor turned to Laura. She put up a hand and said, “Wait.” As soon as she saw Anderson drive off, she picked up the flowers, took them into the kitchenette and dropped them in the trash.

  Fitzpatrick had followed and witnessed the action.

  “Is that for my benefit?”

  Laura was annoyed.

  “No, mine. Why does he think I want flowers from him for Valentine’s Day?”

  “As I said once before, it’s all in the perception of what someone thinks.”

  “I haven’t seen him since December when we had that fracas in here with Jenna’s boyfriend. Then I saw him at the clinic recently because he was the doctor on call. How could anyone draw a conclusion from that?”

  Connor shrugged.

  “With some people you can’t tell. Maybe he was just being friendly. Anyway, I stopped by to remind you of our first date on Valentine’s Day and wanted to know what you want for dinner or where did you want to go?”

  “Mmmm…let me think. Actually, I don’t really mind where we go or what we eat. I like everything. Even if you bring me Chinese takeout.”

  “I’ll pick somewhere to go, then. Wear something nice.”